Committing Suicide, Susan G. Komen Style

For all practical purposes, the Old Man quit giving to charities back in the mid 1990’s because of corruption. But I did have one exception: Breast cancer research. With a sister who died from it and having only two children who are women, I take breast cancer very personal. But the Susan G. Komen Foundation will never see another penny from this old man.

As you may have heard by now, the Foundation decided to come out of the political ideological closet. Spearheaded by Karen Handel, Komen’s senior vice president for public policy, Komen has cut off their financial support for Planned Parenthood (PPH). Their original stated reason was because PPH was involved in providing abortions. But after overwhelming public backlash, they quickly changed their story to say the reason was because PPH was “under investigation” and this went against their “brand-spanking new rules” of not being involved with any one who was under investigation. But that’s also been debunked.

Naturally the investigation Komen is referring to is one by Republican Representative Cliff Stearns of Florida who is among many on the right who insist abortions is all PPH does. But as usual, coming from the political right, that is not only a lie but about as far from the truth as it gets.

As the Old Man and hundreds of others have reported in the past, only three (3) percent of PPH’s budget goes toward abortion services vs. 16% for cancer screening and prevention. In fact, without Komen’s contributions to PPH, tens of thousands of women will go without breast cancer screening because they have no insurance to cover it.

The aforementioned Karen Handel has been in the political spotlight before. She is a former secretary of the state of Georgia and a Republican activist. She also ran for governor of Georgia and was endorsed by none other than Sarah Palin. Yeah, sure — this had nothing to do with politics!

Komen is loosing group support by the thousands. The Washington-based American Association of University Women has quit listing Komen as an available service to women. All seven California Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation affiliates have come out in opposition of Komen’s actions. The protest has spread from coast to coast. And they have taken a dive from a 5-star rating to a 1.5-star over at Great Nonprofits, a sort of “clearing house” for non-profit organizations.

Relative to the “debunking” mentioned above, Komen has other PR problems they will have to deal with concerning organizations that receive Komen funds and are “under investigation”. One is Penn State University who is also under investigation over the much-publicized Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse charges. But there’s one I’m sure Komen doesn’t want to get a lot of public attention

“Under investigation” is Bank of America. But Komen doesn’t “give” funds to the bank; the bank “gives” funds to Komen. But, then again, Komen’s new money-transfer rule most likely applies to “giving” not “receiving”. Besides, that can easily be interpreted as “conditional investigation”.

The dishonest hypocrisy is dripping off Komen by the bucket full’s. This decision has absolutely nothing to do with someone being “under investigation”. In fact the road map to this decision reeks of political ideology. This is about being anti-abortion and nothing else!

With this latest action from Komen, a lot of people will be digging into Komen’s closets to see if there are any skeletons; just like political-candidate front-runners. No doubt there will be some. In fact, back in 2002 Komen was investigated for irregularities. So Komen shouldn’t expect their problems to go away any time soon.

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